For most of my life, the ladies did the cooking.  My mom is an AWESOME cook, and always made delicious meals despite my insistence on eating nothing besides bread and water.  AND WOE BETIDE THE FOOL WHO SLICED MY BAGEL FOR MY WRATH SHALL FALL UPON THEM.  Seriously, I was a pain in the… buns?  Does that bread joke work?  I’m going to leave it in.  But I digest…

We all know that guys can cook on a grill.  It’s manly and simple at a basic level:  Light fire.  Fire hot.  Raw food goes over hot fire.  Cooked food comes off hot fire.  Eat.  Happiness ensues.  Naturally grilling can be ridiculously complex, but I’d rather eat the complicated food than make it.

My brother-in-law is an awesome cook.  Kitchen, grill, smoker, wherever.  I’m fairly confident that if you give him a hot surface, a dead animal, and something that grew in the dirt he can make a incredible meal out of it.  No joke.  He once cooked some steak with an asphalt torch just to see if he could <Spoiler Alert: He could!>.  He’s the one who finally convinced me that it might be possible for me to cook food also.

So for the past few years I’ve been doing the cooking in our house.  Except on rare occasions, my wife simply doesn’t have the time to cook.  The rest of the time it’s mostly up to me, and I’ve been slowly transitioning from bbq grill, to broiler (which is basically an upside-down grill in the oven), to pots and pans meals.  For Chrismahanukwanzikah this past year they bought me an Instant Pot (IP).  Changed my world.  But more interestingly, it also opened my eyes!

You see (eye joke!  Woot!), the Instant Pot is a pressure cooker and can be incredibly intimidating to use, especially for a novice cook!  But he turned me on to an IP Facebook group where other users go to share tips, tricks, recipes, successes, and failures.  It’s been a huge help.

So about now you’re asking, “what the hell does this have to do with dudes cooking vs ladies cooking?”  CALM DOWN!  I’ll get there when I get there.  Now my train of thought derailed… … … okay I’m back.  Here we go.

It’s the comments on these IP Facebook group posts that got me going.  “My husband loves this,” and “I begged my husband to buy this for me,” or “My husband loves it when I use my IP for xyz.”  Blah blah blah.   It’s almost exclusively women talking about cooking for their men.

WHERE ARE THE IP DUDES?  Are they all lurking in the shadows, afraid of drawing attention to themselves?  We are wildly underrepresented in the amateur home-cooking online world.  I’ve made chicken casserole, teriyaki drumsticks, corned beef and cabbage, beef stew, chicken wings, baby back ribs, Beef w/ broccoli, orange chicken, and some other things I’m not even thinking of right now.

So I say, “MY DUDES!  RISE UP AND BE PROUD!  You cooked a thing people ate!  Be loud and shout I TOO CAN FEED PEOPLE!”

And for those of you who are just getting started, here are two tips to help smooth over the process:

1. “What if my food isn’t good?”  Add bacon.  BOOM, it’s good.  You’re welcome.
2. “Cooking is too stressful!” Two fingers of whiskey (neat) while you cook, along with some background music makes everything doable. Again, you’re welcome.

Cheers,

Humble Dave